Sega Master System Homebrew 2016

The results are in for the 2016 SMS Power! Sega Master System coding competition and here's a quick video of the top two games in this years entries. 
Bara Buru is a nice 80's-esque platformer in the style of Bubble Bobble. It's apparently a fully finished game and from what I've played so far seems pretty good. 
Cimmerian is essentially a remake of the classic 8-bit fighter Barbarian. It's still incomplete, but looks promising. Hopefully a complete version will soon follow. 

The Keep - Vic 20 FPS? Well sort of.

Calling this game a first person shooter is pushing it a bit, whilst it is first person, theres not really any shooting here, probably calling it a first person dungeon crawler would be more accurate. It's been out a while, but this new video from Retro Gamer VX is the first I've heard of this game and it's certainly impressive for the system. Running on the original unexpanded Vic-20 it's surprisingly smooth and looks pretty playable. 

Of course this isn't the only game of this type on the humble old Vic, there is in fact a port of Doom available for the system. Whilst not nearly as smooth as the above game, it is a full fledged FPS with enemies to shoot and everything.

Obscure Systems Showcase - Fujitsu FM7/FM 77

The latest in my occasional video series showing off games on less well known systems features the Fujitsu FM7. Another Japan only home computer, it was originally released in 1982 and seemed to enjoy a reasonable level of popularity, competing with the PC8801 and X1. Later on in the udgraded but fully backward compatible FM77 series was released, with superior graphics and sound making it a pretty capable gaming system. 

In this video I've featured a few games for the original unexpanded FM7 and a few for the fancier FM77 model. I suppose I could have done different videos for both the machines, but the FM77 seems more like an upgrade than a different system so I ended up combining them. 

Silpheed is really the stand out title here, it's a lot of fun to play and the graphics and sound are very impressive for the system. Some of the other games were a bit disappointing, they often look better than they play, but Wibarm may be something of a hidden gem if I could work out what the hell was going on. 

The Lands of Zador - Even More Majestic

I've featured The Majesty of Sprites on here before, the startlingly good looking Commodore Plus 4 game from Bauknect, but here's the sequel and it looks even better. The same wonderfully colorful graphics, but this time it seems that all the stages are smoothly scrolling in all four directions. Apparently the gameplay remains much the same, but with some added puzzle elements - a physical release from psytronik software will be coming out sometime soon

Flappy Bird on SEGA VMU and code injected into Super Mario World!

The Dreamcast still receives a lot of attention from homebrewers, with more than a few disc releases in recent years, and it seems like the VMU add-on is almost as popular as a target. It's no surprise then that Flappy bird would eventually end up on here, this game becoming almost as widely unofficially ported as Tetris. The game looks to play slightly differently to the original, but the rest of the elements are there and it's seeming no less irratating. 

   

Whilst I'm about it, here's yet another version of Flappy Bird, but this time with a bizarre twist. The SNES amy already have a version of Flappy Bird, but it's been created once again, this time in a very unusual way. 

Arbitrary code injection exploits, basically a glitch that allows the user to reprogram a game,  have been used in Super Mario World to do all sorts of interesting things for a while now. The Tasbot at AGDQ has got a lot of cool tricks to show off using this exploit and human players have used it to warp directly to the end credits, setting speed run world records in the process. 

This above video showcases something very interesting, a human going through the very laborious process of using a code injection glitch to not just warp to the end of the game, but essentially program a Flappy bird clone in real time. The video explains in all better than I could, so give it a watch.   

Undumpted Famicom Game - Magic Kid Googoo

You'd think by now that every commercial Famicom/Nes game out there would have been dumped as a rom file and made available online. Okay, there may be a few ultra rare unreleased prototypes or betas that aren't circulating (Nintendo no doubt have a few), but surely there can't be any commercial releases out there, right?

Apparently not, as this video of a previously unknown Korean game shows. Whilst it is unlicensed and seems never to have made it out of Korea, it actually looks pretty good and appears to be a fairly well made platformer. Why has it remained so obscure for all these years? No idea at the moment, hopefully more details will be revealed soon, but maybe more Famicom treasures are still out there.

As this game seems to be in the hands of some people associated with Hardcore Gaming 101, it's likely to be dumped soon and hopefully a rom file will me made available so we can all play it.

Hyper Play - The new retro print fanzine.

The age of fanzines has definitely been and gone, replaced of course by the web, like so many other things, but it seems there's a few die-hards still  hanging on. If you're not familiar with the term a fanzine is a fan published magazine, usually put out by amateur enthusiasts and often focusing on niche subjects. Sci-fi, music, football teams and of course computer and video games were popular topics in the past and these magazines were sometimes the only medium by which fans could communicate with like minded others.

It's nice then to see a newly published fanzine, even if it may be one of the last of a dying breed. This one focuses on retro games, particularly RPGs and looks like it could have some interesting content if that's your bag. You can get issue one here at the reasonable price of  £3.50 in the UK and £4.50 for international orders.